What is so special about thisMillionDollarHomepage clone? No, it is not hosted by Al Queda. It targets bloggers, who are apparently so stupid that they need someone to look out for them. And those people looking out for them are so stupid that they are directly linking at the scammy unethical site.

It seems to me that one could just about launch a network and virtually guarantee its success banking on link popularity from stupid evangelical white hat bloggers linking at it. All you have to do is piss one of them off. The ditto heads will follow along.

the ends wouldn’t justify the means in my books. They are using the hard work of others to launch their own business off.

Its really nothing but a bunch of self-referential hypocritical bullshit.

These peope are voting for complete shit they don't like AND they are not even getting paid for it!

That could really undermine Google's index. Now I am starting to understand why some search engineers were talking about pulling blogs out of the regular index. I would not fault them if all blogs were removed to improve the quality of the web.

Firstly - I couldn't believe the site's that linked to the scammer - stupid move in my opinion. I never did this in my posts.

Secondly - The reason I posted the post in the first place was that I saw what I considered to be unethical behavior that was targeting bloggers. The conundrum that I found myself in was that on one hand I didn't want to give them any publicity that might make them bigger and on the other hand I wasn't willing to let them rip people off by ignoring it.

What's wrong with what they are doing?

1. They are getting cash out of bloggers by deceiving them (I've had emails from people who got sucked in and others who would have been sucked in if they hadn't seen something about it on one of the sites that mentioned it). I don't know how many people they were spamming with the offers to join but they claimed to be sending the offer to 5000 bloggers. From what I can see - what they were doing was at best 'deceptive' and at worst some have said it's 'fraudulent'. Look at the size of the page that they want to fill and you'll see how much they stood to gain from it.

2. They were explicitly using the names and logos of companies for their own personal gain and implying that these blogs were a part of their system when they were not. I'm not sure if you've seen the press releases (that went out on all the major wires) but the headline of them was that Boing Boing had signed up to be a part of the network. I saw these releases on some pretty major networks.

So what's a guy to do?

I had a few options. I guess I could have ignored it and let people get ripped off. I could have politely emailed the people behind it and complained (and gotten ignored myself), I could have emailed all the bloggers being featured and sucked in (but what could people do after the fact?) or I could use the fact that I have a blog that people read to warn them of it.

I took the last option - knowing that in doing so I risked others linking to the offending site - but at least knowing that some people would be protected.

The reaction to my post has been mixed. I've been thanked by some of those whose logos were being featured, thanked by some who were ripped off and by those who saw the story before signing up. On the other hand I've been attacked by some who see nothing wrong with the site and say I should encourage their entrepreneurial spirit and have been ridiculed for giving them publicity.

I still don't really know what I should have done - perhaps it would have been 'easier' to ignore it and hope it went away - but sometimes in life you have to name things for what they are.

Lastly - all I'll say is that the site in question has made some changes. I don't know how long they'll last or what it all means but they say they've closed applications, that they've made some mistakes, that they are now not going to charge for the program.

I still don't really know what I should have done - perhaps it would have been 'easier' to ignore it and hope it went away - but sometimes in life you have to name things for what they are.

Well - for a start - you could have pointed out that directly linking to them would give them your vote. You could have used a 302 based link, or Javascript, or even the link condom that Matt made you.

I think the issue is that you guys all linked directly to the scam. As Aaron said:

Quote:

..so stupid that they are directly linking at the scammy unethical site

ok - sorry I over reacted. to be honest I wasn't expecting this whole saga to get as out of hand as it has. I've spent more time respondig to it than anything else I've written for the last week or so and am quite amazed by the can of worms its opened up.

Scoble has a related story about people referencing non credible journalists, but misses the fact that by even citing shit articles they grant them authority. That is how search works...a popularity contest. As noted at the top of this page, most bloggers link to things they think are shit.